Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Ven Jampa Gendun uses physicist John Wheeler’s speculation that atomic nuclei didn’t exist before anyone conceived of them to open this 42-minute session on emptiness — a bridge between modern physics and Buddhist philosophy. He contrasts the view that objects self-define with the Madhyamaka position that all phenomena are merely imputed by terms and concepts, drawing parallels with Bohr on language and Nelson Goodman’s world-making. The session then pivots to practice: Ven Gendun introduces the four-point analysis for meditating on the selflessness of persons, focusing most closely on identifying the object of negation — the solid, independent ‘I’ that surges up in emotional situations — and cites Śāntideva on why you must clearly picture what you are looking for before non-findability can undermine belief in it. Suited to practitioners with some Madhyamaka background.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 20 HMA 1997 09 17.mp3
UUID: 767769ee-1c77-42a0-916e-5c8ba3250f13
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-09-17
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 41.7 minutes
Words: ~5,323
Autonomy. It’s good. Autonomy. We we identify objects through the force of the object’s own defining characteristics. Every object has an inherent nature.
It’s self defining. By that these self defining characteristic appearing to our awareness by means of a combination of the subjective and objective factors, an object, whatever it might be, comes into existence. By the force of hot and burning appearing to, for example, an eye consciousness, fire comes into existence. So there is, from the point of view of the autonomy, middle way school, we don’t define what an object is. An object defines itself.
It has some intrinsic characteristic, which is its nature inherent to it. And it’s by this appearing that we we come to know what it is. At the Prāsaṇgika Madhyamaka school, we’re going to go beyond that. The basic understanding is that all phenomena are merely imputed by terms and conceptuality. All phenomena are merely imputed.
The word merely is is very important here because the word merely here eliminates the fact that objects define themselves. At the level of the Consequentialist autonomy school, there is no inherent existence. There is no inherent existence. Objects do not have an intrinsic character, nature of their own. They are not in any way self defining. They do not define what they are.
We do. So there is phenomena exist, but but they exist by means of imputation, by designation, by labeling. They do not inherently exist. For example, you know, through through sexual intercourse, a child is conceived and then when that baby is born, it’s given the name John. And as the parents get together, let’s call the baby John.
By the so the person John comes into existence in dependence upon causes, sexual intercourse, the union of the sperm and ovum, etcetera. It comes into existence the the person John comes into dependence into existence, in dependence upon its parts, a mind and a body, but it also comes into existence in dependence upon being given the name John and being thought of subsequently as John. Without so John is dependent upon these three, cause and conditions, parts, and the labeling process. The using of names, terms, and the conceptuality which makes use of those terms. So John is not a name.
John is a human being, but his existence is dependent upon his name, is dependent upon conceptuality. So there but moreover, there there was no inherent attribute about that baby which forced it forced us to call it John. There was no Johnness about him. Something that kind of you know, the moment you look at him, well, it’s John, obviously. What else are you gonna call him?
There’s something oozing out of his skin, some kind of inherent identity, which demanded if we’re gonna call him in any Give him a proper Call him, think of him in a proper manner, we’re going to have to think of him as John. If we’re going to think of him in a correct manner, we’re going to have to think of him as John in some way that there was nothing whatsoever which determined from the side of the of the object what it was, what we’re going the the name that we’re going to label it. So there there is a basis, a mind and body, and on the dependence upon that basis appearing to a mind, the mind thinks of John. That is and this this this thinking, John, is what we call imputing, labeling, designating. This is what we mean by knowing.
It’s not as if it’s it’s not as if there’s two processes. Knowing is the process of bringing into the knowing. The labeling is what we know. We know something through the process of labeling it as such. It’s not as if you know, as opposed to the notion that we have at like at the Hīnayāna stage where the mind is simply like a mirror and these objects out there which truly exist, which exist objectively cast their reflection upon this clear mirror, and that that way, that notion of how we come to know.
A mirror simply reflects whatever appears in front of it before it. It doesn’t play any part in determining the nature of that reflection, what it is that object that is appearing in the mirror. So but this is this is a but at the at the middle way scope, the mind isn’t thought of just as a passive mirror in which objects are casting their image upon it, but moreover are involved in the in the very creation of these objects which appear. There’s a participatory nature about our involvement and knowing of the world, not a passive, it’s an active quality of knowing. The first thing is the idea about the mirror is like here a stage, but here we’re talking about the middle ways.
Yeah? So recall physicist John Wheeler’s speculation that the nuclei and protons did not exist prior to this twentieth century since no one before nineteen hundred ever saw one. Here is a radical departure from both scientific realism and instrumentalism. He he seems to suggest that atomic nuclei do not exist independently in the objective world, but neither are they merely conceptual constructions having no physical reality. Rather, he implies that they were brought into existence by our conception of them.
The word conception is a very interesting word, isn’t Note that the term conception has been used in both the senses of origination and of cogitation. To conceive something is both to think about it and to bring it into existence. But, you know, but when we think about this in this way, I think the question probably should eventually arise for us. If nothing objectively exists, if an object is what it is merely through being called and through and through being thought of as such, then we can call anything anything, and that makes it so. You know, whatever we imagine that exists exists.
So this notion of, well, why do we call what we call? How do we validate existence if it’s merely a matter of naming, if it’s merely a matter if nothing if objects in fact don’t define themselves, we do, then then whatever it is I believe to exist must exist. You know, this is a question, not a statement. Bohr Bohr, the great physicist, spoke a great deal about the language community in which physics exists, in which physicists communicate, and was very much aware of the degree to which our language creates a reality. According to Peterson, Bohr’s student and long long time collaborator, Bohr would say, what is it that we human beings ultimately depend upon?
We depend upon words. And in the Bible it says in the beginning was the word, we ultimately depend upon words. We are suspended in language. Peterson continues, when one said to him that it cannot be language which is fundamental, but that it must be reality, which is which is, so to speak, lies behind language, and in which language is a picture he he could he would reply. We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what what is up and what is down.
The word reality is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly. So the difficult notion which is slowly being gotten at here is our world, this is our world, our reality, is one which has been communicated to us. It exists as a conventionality and nothing more. Nothing ultimately exists. Everything conventionally exists.
So but these conventionalities you know, a conventionality is like an agreement, isn’t it? A convention. We’ve come to some agreement. We’ve come to some kind of convention, some kind of common consensus. These conventionalities, this this common consensus are not arbitrary.
They’re not they’re not simply not the whims or the or the imaginings of individuals, but social constructions which are not contradicted by valid cognitions. So we get into developing a notion of a socially constructed reality. It’s not individual whim. It’s not individual fancy which determines what things are. We are born into a world of meaning.
We we are plugged into these conventionalities. We, you know, we learn what the world is. We are socialized into the knowing of our world, our reality. You know, we are born into a particular version of reality we call world. It is a particular version of reality, and we call this version world.
The objects which make up our world along with with all their attributes are only imputed, are determined by the force of popular conventions. Do not intrinsically exist. And this is, you know, it’s we we we have some intimation of this when we when we when we when we use the notions that, like, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, you know, that beauty is a cultural culturally determined. It’s not intrinsic to an object. You know, there was a Platonic notion of intrinsic beauty, that everything was that there were ideas and everything sought to approach the idea of beauty.
But in understand that in in practice our notions of beauty are very much conditioned by. You know, the the look at how much billion how many billions of dollars are spent by the fashion industry to make us dissatisfied with last year’s fashions and to think of this this year’s fashions as being the most stylish, as being the most attractive. And they do look the most stylish. They do look the most attractive. That’s the difficult part of it.
It works. Really. We’re indoctrinated into a conception of beauty, and we see it out there. We no longer see it that we are in labeling it or projecting it from our own side. We we externalize these projections and we see them existing from their own side, and I have to have that beauty because it’s going to bring me bliss and we want to bring it back inside.
So we are born into a particular version of reality we could recall our world. So this is a notion of There’s one Harvard professor by the name of Nelson Goodman, and he’s developed a view what he calls world making, that the characteristics of a world and its symbols. He he argues that that all the various worlds, and there are various worlds, the worlds of scientists, the worlds of artists, the worlds of ordinary men and women, are just versions that can be judged right or wrong in terms of the various internal characteristics or or comparing various versions. But, you know, there’s no underlying reality that we can judge right and wrong by. There is only convention, nothing more than that.
There’s no substratum. There’s there’s always this notion that there’s that there must be something more someone asked it a couple weeks ago that in on Tuesday night, I remember, that there was really behind this all, there’s some kind of spiritual reality. Now this is all fantasy, but there’s something real. If I could only see it, if I could only work, you know, if I only had some kind of great insight, this is all there is. This is this is, you know, if you see it, you can see it as a pure land.
Otherwise, it’s just a, you know, mundane reality. But there’s nothing more than these appearances. There’s nothing behind these appearances. This this is the only world that we have. You know, that the met all the stuff, the many stuffs, matter, energy, waves, phenomena, that worlds are made of are made along with the worlds.
But made from what? Not from nothing after all, but from other worlds. World making as we know it always starts from worlds already on hand. The making is remaking. We that we are born into a world appropriate to ourselves.
It’s not it’s not an accident that we are somehow human beings living in an environment which is able which sustains human beings, which has meaning for human beings, which seems appropriate to human beings in some way or another. We take that for granted, but it’s not something but it has cause nonetheless. The world is what it is free of our distorting conceptual overlays about it, you know, our elaborations that we are continually projecting upon it. We have you know, it is this is it is our world. We are not simply alien beings, strangers on a strange planet, you know, stuck down, but it is appropriate to ourselves, our past thinking, our past actions, our karma.
And we have a shared karma. We have a share What does that mean? One way of interpreting that is that you know, it’s like you know, this is a very simple minded image. You know, if you were to look at, you know, the what they call inkblots, like a Rorschach, you know, that some people see animals, some people see faces, and Some people are bat minded, they see bats. But but what There’s nothing there in and of itself.
It’s a reflection of something. What we do, we we like, there’s just these chaotic blobs of black against white, and we we the mind seeks seeks to order, to organize this chaos into some recognizable fashion. And if we can name something, we can we we gain some kind of power over it. We can manipulate it. We can think about it.
We can cause it to come up we can cause it to to we can bring it up again. So in a word, language has tremendous power. So we’re we’re trying to organize our reality. This is as if it is as if there’s simply chaos being bombarded with stimulus of colors and shapes and sounds. So we how do we what how do we go about organizing a reality?
This is our karma, okay, which predisposes ourselves to organize, to make use of certain rules in making sense of our world, our epistemology, the way that we know, the rules that we use in bringing this chaos to order. That is, this is the process of coming to know. We have shared rules, shared karma, by means of which we interpret, we organize, and come to know this world about us. It’s not coming from its own side. There is a basis.
There is the Rorschach. There is the chaos, as it were, but this only in a manner of speaking again. But the way that we organize that, interpret it, is very much determined upon by means of our predispositions. You know, it’s like another simple minded notion is like somebody who’s a paranoid. I mean, there’s not I once I once spoke with a psychiatrist.
He was talking about paranoia. Said, he really can’t stand working with paranoids. He says, there’s nothing you can do. Even if you’re most sincere, caring, they can quite logically see, interpret what you what many much of what you say and do as being a threat to them, that somehow you’re manipulating them, that you have your own agenda, that you’re after them in some way, that you’re a threat to them, that you’re going to bring them harm. It’s quite logical, the reasoning.
Many many paranoia are tremendously intelligent people. That is to say that they are predisposed to interpret particular behaviors on your part in this manner. You know, it’s a way that they that they interpret come to know. We we we interpret come to know in terms of human mindedness, you might say, you know, what it what it might mean to, you know, to to what it all that it takes to for us to experience humanity, humanness. Pre we’re predisposed to interpret things in such ways that we we interpret it as and it gives rise, you know, it it play interplay between ourselves and our world.
We arise as humans living in in a human environment humanly sustainable environment, and the the the organism and its environment as a unit, and the interplay between the two which makes our world what it is and ourselves what we are, all arising from the karma. It’s predisposing ways to interpret, to organize our reality, to come to know. Knowing is a process of coming into the known. So, you know, there there there is you know, we can involve ourselves. You know, this this is the great vision of Buddhism, is that we can involve ourselves in therapeutic world making.
We can create what is called a pure land. If this is not a pure land, then a pure land does exist. But it’s a saṃsāra which is organizing along different lines and which prevents us from seeing it that way, which we see it as limited and mundane, as ordinary in some fashion, and our ourselves as limited and mundane and ordinary human beings. But that’s just our conceptions. Our conceptions are all there are for the present.
We’ve been talking a lot in terms of just trying to develop a theoretic basis to gain some of these ideas, some kind of concepts about what we’re thinking, that nothing intrinsically exists in what that might mean. But it’s necessary that we we sort of move it towards something more experiential in terms of of our meditation. So one way that we can work with this is a meditation practice called the four essentials, and we’re going to, you know, discuss these four essentials and actually meditate. You know, in general, we’re talking about emptiness. And emptiness, if don’t come away with anything else, should understand by emptiness we mean empty of what?
A lack of what? An absence of what? An absence of a particular fantasized way of existing, of a particular fabricated way of existing. This fantasized way of existing, hallucinated way of existing has many names. We call it, for example, inherent existence, intrinsic existence, objective existence, true existence, they’re all trying to get at the same idea.
Think that reality is empty of those ways of existing. These aren’t philosophic notions which are we are superimposing upon reality. These are instinctive ways in which we understand our world as if things existed in and of themselves objectively from their own side, independent of causes and conditions, independent of parts, independent of upon language and conceptuality. There are two levels There are two types of emptiness, not levels, two types. There is the emptiness of phenomena, tables, houses, chairs, and there is emptiness of persons, all all objects, living creatures.
So one way that we can approach most especially coming to an understanding of the emptiness of persons, and this is synonymous with selflessness. When we say the word selflessness, self, there is both a self of persons, and by persons I mean all living creatures, there is both a self of persons and there is a self of phenomena. I mean, it’s unusual perhaps to think of it in that way. This term is used in Buddhism. There’s a self of tables, there’s a self of rugs, a self of buildings.
This is why I was emphasizing the fact that when we when we consider the self in this context of the awakened mind, we aren’t talking about the psychological qualities, characteristics of the self. You know, we wouldn’t talk about the psychological characteristics of a table, I doubt, or the psychological characteristics of the rug, you know, whether it felt secure or not. Don’t know. Whether whether it was, you know, upset about being stepped on all the time. I don’t know.
So when we talk about the self with rugs and tables and people, we’re not talking about a psychological nature or identity in any way. We’re talking about its ontological status, its mode of existence, its mode of being, the way the rug exists, the way the self or the rug exists, way its entities, its identity. Another word we can use for self is identity. The rug has an identity, and we’re talking about the way that identity exists. The self has an the persons have an identity in the way that that identity exists.
How does this exist? Does it exist independent of conditions, of parts and language and conceptuality, or does it exist in dependence upon them, for example? So in approaching the actual meditation on the selflessness of the person, So a self, an identity. And here when we say self, we mean a self which is independent self, which is independent of causes and conditions, which is independent of its parts, which is independent of terms and conceptuality, that self is selfless. That means it’s it’s absence, that absence of self, selfless.
That self doesn’t exist, but ignorance conceives of it to exist. So in coming to this understanding with regard to human beings, with regard to creatures, ourselves, as persons, there’s a meditation method which is called the four essentials. And what is necessary that we we explain these, go through these four essentials, and then we can actually meditate upon them to gain some experience in terms of selflessness, emptiness. So the first of these is I’ll just I’ll just name them, okay, the four essentials. Sometimes this is called This meditation is sometimes referred to as the four point analysis.
Sometimes it’s called the four keys, which are Let’s call it the four essentials. The first so there’s four essentials that we we have to work through. The first is the essential of determining the object of negation. The essential of determining the object of negation. The second is the essential of determining the pervasion.
The essential of determining the pervasion. The third is essential of determining the lack of being the same. Determining the lack of being the same. And finally, the fourth is the essential of determining the lack of of being different. Determining the lack of being different.
So these are the four essentials, and we’re going to discuss these four and meditate on them. The first of these four essentials is ascertaining the object of negation or the object to be refuted. The object to be refuted, the object of negation. It’s both the most difficult and the most important. That’s a problem, isn’t it?
The most important point is the most difficult point. If we can get this one right, the rest is a piece of cake. We will understand it quite quickly, quite readily. We have to get a feel. You know, it’s just like in the case where we where you saw in the grass where in fact there is a striped rope and you see a snake.
The snakes appear you know, you can’t I mean, think about it. You know, there’s a you’re walking along and a snake appears to you. You know, when I say impute, it sounds like it’s some kind of mental act. It sounds like some kind of intellectual activity, doesn’t it? But when you see that snake, you don’t think of that intellectual activity, do you?
But that’s what we’re talking about when we say impute. There’s there there’s an appearance something appears to your mind. Where is that appearance coming from? We can’t say it’s coming from the object, but we can’t we can’t but we can’t say it’s it’s completely independent of that object either. That object catalyzed, served as to stimulate the mind, that coil of striped rope, stimulated an appearance to the mind, and stimulated a conception of a snake.
It’s not just word when we say conception. It’s not it’s not like a dialogue in our mind, thinking in word, word thought. An image appears, an image of a snake. You can’t deny that that what is appearing to you. I mean, the sense that you can’t the appearance exists.
It doesn’t have any reference in reality, but we think it does. So what so this is the first thing we have to begin to recognize, is how the I is appearing to me, especially under emotional situations. If someone calls you a thief, anyway, we’ll we’ll we’ll get into that. There there arises something. I’m I what do you mean I’m a thief?
I’m not gonna I, that I. You know, you’re you’re working with symbols. The mind is manipulating images in this thinking process, in this thought process, and all these various emotions are rising in dependence upon process. There’s there are various but, you know, generally when we’re especially in emotional situations, we’re completely captivated by the object, wrapped up in the object. All of our attention and awareness is concentrated, is focused upon the object.
There’s almost almost no awareness or attention given to the subjective aspect of the experience except in terms of feeling, of being hurt or being sad or being happy, but not in terms of who it is that’s undergoing the experience. I can’t stand you. What we know all the emphasis, the attention is being devoted to that person that you can’t stand, how rotten they are, how disgusting, repulsive, not the eye which can’t do the standing, which you know, it’s all being directed at the object. Here, the difficulty is to to try to get a sense of what is the subjective element of that. Who is the author?
Who is the agent? Who is who is directing this show? Who is experiencing, who’s undergoing all of what’s going what’s going on? You know, I I hate your guts. I can’t I can’t There’s an I at that moment which is appearing to you, just like in the case of a snake.
There’s a snake appearing to you. I can’t stand you. There’s a snake. There’s an I appearing to you. What does that eye look like?
That’s this is the object of negation. Just as in the snake, the snake doesn’t exist. We cannot negate something that exists. To negate something is to say is to understand that it doesn’t exist, is to eliminate it, is to refute. It really you know, if somebody were to say Somebody were to say that today is Tuesday.
No, I can refute that because it’s really not Tuesday, it’s Wednesday. If it was really If somebody said it was Wednesday, then you couldn’t legitimately refute it. You could argue against it, but you couldn’t negate the fact that it’s still Wednesday no matter what how however much you argue. Argue. So just as in that the snake appears to ourselves, but if if we but we can begin to undermine the mind’s belief in the reality of that appearance.
We can begin to negate its its not the appearance, but what is that appearance is referring to. human minds are model builders. We cannot we do have a model of a type of self, which appears to be at the core of our being, which appears to be independent, solid, concrete. That model of a self exists. We want to be able to identify that model and begin to understand that it’s simply nothing more than a model, a symbol, an eye symbol that we we have been using in our mind.
But moreover, it has no reference to reality. Just like that image of a snake which is appearing to our mind has no reference in reality. And therefore, understanding that, then it no longer captivates us. It no longer dominates our thinking and our our emotional responses. The inherently existent I, the independently existent I does not exist, in fact, but its appearance exists.
The image of it exists. A model of it exists. So we we at this point, in determining the object and negation, we’re trying to identify what does that model look like. And when I say, I hate your guts. I’m the most beautiful thing that ever came to Adelaide.
What does that eye look like? What is its qualities? What is it can it can it can it sustain analysis, investigation? Color is it? What shape is it?
Is it dependent, independent? Is it permanent? Is it impermanent? It does it have parts? Is it partless?
So looking at that model. So one of the keys to understanding emptiness is non findability upon analysis. Non findability. Non findability. It’s it’s a prerequisite in any search that we we know what it is we’re looking for.
Have you ever noticed that? If you don’t know what you’re looking for, it’s hard to find it, or it’s hard not to find it. You know, the clearer we know what we are looking for, the greater our conviction in its nonexistence upon not being able to find it, where it should exist. You know, if if it exists if if exists at all, you know, it’s like if if if there was a thief, if we thought there was a thief in this room, then without properly identifying that thief, if we didn’t know what the thief looked like, we couldn’t really say whether he or she were in this room or not. We couldn’t really because we haven’t clearly identified them for ourselves.
So there’s an important quote from Śāntideva’s Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life, where he says that without contacting the imagined existent, its nonexistence is not ascertained. Without contacting the imagined existent, We imagine that something exists, this I, without contacting it, that is making it clear to ourselves what it looks like, then we if we don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, then when we go to look for it to see if it in fact exists, we will never be sure whether it exists or not. There’s always going to be some doubt. You know, if we don’t clearly identify the self or the I that’s appearing to ourselves in in these emotional situations, then then the analysis can’t really proceed for the reason that there’s there’s either no actual object being searched for or because we we only have a vague and blurry image. And if we only have a vague and blurry image, then the non findability does not possess the strength of conviction to overcome our deeply ingrained belief in the existence of that object.
We believe that the object exists. We’ve never really looked to it. We’ve taken it for granted. Now we’re going for once, we’re going to search up, examine whether that object exists or not. But we have to clearly identify what it is we’re looking for because once we begin once we analyze, once we actually look, it is only when we have to come to a clear conviction.
I know exactly what I’m looking for. I’ve looked everywhere that it could possibly exist. I haven’t found it. It can’t exist. I thought it exists.
It appeared to exist, but in fact it doesn’t. Without clearly having a real sense for yourself that I know what I’m looking for, then when you it’s non findability. The fact that you don’t find it will not have any force. It will not be able to undermine your ignorance. So we are trying to Oh my goodness.
We’re trying to another time. I’m sorry. We’ll continue. Dedicate the creative potential, the positive energy that we’ve accumulated in this way. In the land as circled by snow mountains, you’re the source of all happiness and well-being.
Powerful Chenrezig Tenzin Gyatso, please remain to the end of cyclic existence. May I quickly become an awakened spiritual master and lead each and every living being to that awakened realm through these skillful actions. May the supreme jewel of the awakened heart that has not arisen arise and grow, and may that which has arisen never diminish but increase more and more.